telling the story with my whole heart

Do what makes you happy

Upon completing this task (one which I wondered about doing for a week), I felt giddy and childlike to the point that my husband may have wondered just who he married.

Last night, we went to Dairy Queen and I ordered a chocolate-dipped cone (I always get a peanut-butter-cup Blizzard or Buster Bars). I haven’t enjoyed one of those cones since I was little and my best friend Bernadette and I would sneak deep into the woods that backed to our houses in New Jersey and follow the path that led all the way to the shopping center with the Thrift Drug (oh Bonnie Bell Kissing Stick strawberry lip gloss!), Woolworth (always smelled like popcorn), a pizzeria that sold by-the-slice, and the Dairy Queen. The journey meant disobeying our parents and also trekking across 2 quick moving creeks that had mossy-slick shopping carts and shipping pallets cast across them. We’d creek-walk both ways, my sneakers and jeans usually wet from falling in, though my mother, who forbid me to go that far in the woods, never seemed to notice them. I guess I was only a rule-follower to a point. I think we paid for our cones in carefully-counted change – not sure where we got that change as 8-year-olds (selling lemonade at the golf course, I’m thinking), but we had it.

This weekend Mike & I biked, despite Weather Center’s “dire storm warnings” and danced in the kitchen (well, just I danced in the kitchen) as we were cleaning up from a stir fry dinner. We went to the movies (“wasting the day” my mom’s voice in my head), ordered a medium (not small) popcorn, and experienced Mad Max, in 3-D, a film Mike thought I’d hate, but I didn’t. (A classic Distopian quest story, what’s not to like?)

Do what makes you happy. Good and wise advice I received today from Reader/Friend, Andy Hampton. This ones for you . . .